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Greenhill Petroleum Corporation Well Blowout

Until the wellhead was capped, the main response effort was to catch oil that reached the
water as near to the wellhead as was operationally safe for the cleanup crews.  This was
done by placing 48-inch boom attached to pilings driven at five points around the
wellhead.  As long as the skimmers were able to take the oil from the booms quickly, this
approach worked well; when the booms were torn apart by tugs trying to remove a workover
barge that had been caught in the fire, oil again flowed into the bay.

Natural forces were the primary factor in mitigating the effects of this spill.  The
booming and skimming were both labor intensive and relatively ineffective.  The inability
to boom the product adequately could have been a major concern if the winds had pushed the
product into the highly sensitive marshes north of Timbalier Bay.  It is highly unlikely
that mechanical means would have been capable of containing and retrieving the oil, but
the wellhead caught fire and drastically reduced the amount of product reaching the water.